A client asked us something last month that stuck with us. “When I ask ChatGPT for the best accountant in my city, why does it recommend my competitor and not me?”
Fair question. And it’s one more business owners are going to ask, because the way people search is changing. A lot of people don’t scroll through ten blue links anymore. They ask an AI assistant, get one answer, and move on.
That’s where GEO comes in.
So what is GEO?
GEO stands for Generative Engine Optimization. It’s the work of making your business easy for AI tools to find, understand and recommend. We’re talking about ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google’s AI Overviews, Gemini and Microsoft Copilot.
SEO gets your pages to rank on Google. GEO gets your brand into the answer itself.
They overlap a lot, and honestly, good SEO is the foundation. But GEO adds a few things that classic SEO checklists often skip.
How do AI tools decide who to mention?
Nobody outside these companies knows the exact recipe, and it keeps changing. But after testing this for our own clients, a few patterns are clear:
- **They pull from pages they can read and trust.** If your site is slow, blocked, or full of vague marketing copy, there’s nothing useful to quote.
- **They like clear, direct answers.** A page that answers “How much does a website cost?” in the first paragraph is easier to use than one that makes you scroll through a story.
- **They look for agreement across the web.** If your business name, services and location are consistent on your site, Google Business Profile, directories and reviews, the AI is more confident talking about you.
- **They cite sources.** Tools like Perplexity and AI Overviews link to the pages they used. Being one of those pages is the goal.
Five things you can do this month
You don’t need a big budget to start. Here’s what we’d do first:
- **Write down the questions your customers actually ask.** Check your inbox, your sales calls, your WhatsApp. Those questions are your content plan.
- **Answer them clearly on your website.** One question, one clear answer near the top, then the details. FAQ sections work really well here.
- **Add structured data.** Schema markup (like Organization, FAQ and Product) tells machines exactly what your page is about. Most SEO plugins can do this.
- **Clean up your business info everywhere.** Same name, same description, same contact details on every profile. Old listings with wrong info confuse AI tools just like they confuse people.
- **Get mentioned on other sites.** Reviews, interviews, guest posts, partner pages. The more trusted places talk about you, the more likely AI tools will too.
Quick test: ask ChatGPT and Perplexity “What does [your business name] do?” If the answer is wrong or empty, that’s your starting point.
Is SEO dead, then?
No. Most AI answers still lean on the same pages that rank well in search. If anything, GEO makes good SEO more valuable, not less. Think of it as SEO with a new audience: the machines that answer questions for your customers.
How we handle it
When we work on SEO & GEO for a client, we start with an audit of both: where they rank on Google, and what AI tools currently say about them. Then we fix the technical side, build answer-first content and work on the brand signals around the web.
If you want to know where you stand, take a look at our SEO & GEO service or ask us for a free snapshot. We’ll tell you honestly what’s worth doing.